Teaching Current Events and Math

They had more ideas on current events but I decided to only post the ones for math but please click here to see the whole article.  

There's plenty of math in the news too!

Figuring an average. Students might collect classified "Homes for Sale" ads for ten homes in a given area or for homes of a given size (e.g., two-bedroom homes). Invite students to figure from those ads the average cost for a home. (Or students might figure the average rent for homes of similar characteristics from the "Apartments for Rent" section of the newspaper.)

More ad math. Invite each student to choose a job ad from the newspaper classifieds; the ad must include a yearly salary figure. (Teach students that the term "40K" often seen in job ads is short for $40,000.) Invite students to figure from that salary figure the average monthly, weekly, daily (based on a 5-day week), and hourly (based on an 8-hour day) salary for that job.

Ad math #3. Provide a group of five ads from a local newspaper and the section of the paper that describes how much it costs to place an ad. Invite students to use the per-word or per-line cost information to figure out how much it cost to run each of the five ads.

Guess-timating! Provide each student with the copy of a news story. (Story length will vary depending on grade level.) Invite students to count the number of words in each of the first five lines of the story and to guess-timate, based on that figure, how many words long the whole story is. Older students might average the number of words in the first five lines and consider half-lines and other elements of a story to come up with a more accurate figure. Let students share their estimates and how they arrived at them. Then inform students of the exact number of words in the story (which you have pre-counted). A prize goes to the winner!

Furnish a home! Invite students to use store ads to figure the cost of furnishing a home. You might provide a list of items for each of four rooms, including a living room, a kitchen, a dining room, and a bedroom. For example, living room furniture might include a couch and side chair, a coffee table, a television, and an air conditioner. Older students might also need to figure the cost of carpeting the living room! (Options: Provide students with a budget for furnishing a four-room home and let them set priorities for the furnishings they'll select. For older students, state and local sales taxes might be figured as part of the total cost.)